Realizing each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own | Hacker News Reader

Realizing each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own

organizingcreativity.com

4 pointsdanboarder6 comments

I found this when looking to contrast with how some think of others as non-player characters (NPCs in gaming vernacular).

Sonder (uncountable) (neologism) The profound feeling of realizing that everyone, including strangers passing in the street, has a life as complex as one's own, which they are constantly living despite one's personal lack of awareness of it.

This is insightful as it brings a sense of introspection and humanizes the "other" unknown people around us as deserving the same level of respect we expect from others, while the NPC concept when applied to daily life does the opposite.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sonder https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/NPC

Thank-you.

From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Kroenig (2021).

But what happens when you realise that your life is straight forward and simple, whereas everyone else around you is living complex or seemingly complex lives?

I imagine your perception of "straight forward and simple", is itself a simplification of the many complexities that make up one's life; for example, to start with, the infinite biological complexity of the cells, nervous system, brain, and pondering how thoughts and ideas flow through one's consciousness...

Thanks for the reply. I feel very hesitant about saying anything further anyway but I will. Consciousness is an expression of love, which is another way to describe the life in us. Consciousness as love is not complex. In our life we can choose love or the ego but it is up to us. When I say life is straight forward what I mean is, it is because it is just an expression of love each day. This isn't complex, but it can be if you want it to be. I can also respect how cells, their process and function can also seem complex but again they are just doing what they do based on their type and composition. They are all working together to help us with a vehicle to move through this life. Thank you for the opportunity to clarify this for myself as well. Thanks

A beautiful and poetic response, thanks for sharing and clarifying your thoughts further.

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